On Nov. 2, 2022, we held our first-ever Site Work Summit, bringing together top homebuilding and land development professionals. The event was held in Houston, Texas at the Dragonfly Community Center within Howard Hughes Corporation’s Bridgeland community.
The theme of conversation throughout Site Work Summit was how technology can improve the homebuilding and land development industries. An inspiring, highly successful panel of TraceAir clients shared their experiences and insights on using TraceAir’s land development platform to improve transparency, achieve site balance, and create more efficient workflows on their projects. Panelists discussed the challenges of technology adoption and how technology increases profit margins.
The first discussion of the day, led by TraceAir’s Head of Marketing, Samantha Burns, focused on the importance of transparency on projects and how technology improves workflows. Brian Hunnicutt, Director of Land Development at Green Brick Partners, spoke on how sharing TraceAir with his project team and in meetings ensures everyone is on the same page. "It's a lot less likely for discrepancies to happen when we're all looking at the same thing", said Hunnicutt.
This transparency also helps his team stay ahead of costly setbacks. “Dirt can quickly become a very expensive problem on our projects”, he shared. “TraceAir helps us communicate better with our engineers and contractors. Using TraceAir in our regular meetings allows us to quantify progress and make necessary grading adjustments. It allows us to have really effective communication. Rather than just asking questions or talking about things, we can look at the project in TraceAir and make sure we are all on the same page.”
Quincy Crow, Owner of Open Space TX shared how TraceAir helps his project members and contractors visualize progress and make the best use of their time. “We are working on one of the largest phase one dirt projects that we’ve ever worked on. With such a massive project, it’s very easy to get disoriented on site. Rather than spending hours going to the job site and driving all around to see something, we can just pull up TraceAir and look at it, measure, see the progress, whatever we need to do. The tools within TraceAir make our workflows much faster.”
The next discussion, led by TraceAir’s Head of Sales, Will Johnson, featured an overview of how The Howard Hughes Corporation utilizes TraceAir on their 11,400-acre master-planned community, Bridgeland. Tricia Brasseaux, Director of Planning and Development on the project, shared different ways she uses TraceAir and how providing the entire project team with access to TraceAir has been extremely beneficial. In fact, the project has over 250 users within TraceAir.
Brasseaux also explained how TraceAir has been a game changer for managing their dirt balance. Empowered with easy-to-use tools within TraceAir, her team is able to keep an eye on dirt movement, measure stockpiles, and avoid moving dirt twice. “Before TraceAir, we relied on survey crews to figure out our site balance”, she shared. “Now we can measure our stockpiles and track dirt movement ourselves in seconds using TraceAir. It saves us serious time and money.”
Our team loves it because it’s easy to use and it’s accurate. TraceAir helps us spend less time driving to project sites or looking for data, and more time making progress. In meetings and conversations, TraceAir helps us make the best use of our time.”
— Tricia Brasseaux, Director of Planning and Development, The Howard Hughes Corporation
During the event, TraceAir’s Customer Success Manager, Isabella Knori, conducted a live demo of TraceAir’s newest feature, Exhibits. This collaborative tool allows users to unlock the power of visual planning within TraceAir. Users can combine all the tools within TraceAir to create continuous workflows. Knorr impressed attendees with a demo of TraceAir’s Lot Viewer tool. A must-have for homebuilders, Lot Viewer breaks up your project into individual lots and calculates cut/fill balance and elevations. It then compares these elevations to the design grade and creates a report.
Site Work Summit concluded with a look into the future of TraceAir with Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Maria Khokhlova. Several exciting new features are in the works, including tools to help with scheduling and collaboration. “We want to make projects faster and smoother by empowering 100% of the team with easy-to-use data and tools”, shared Khokhlova.
Thanks to everyone who attended and helped make our inaugural event a huge success! Our next Site Work Summit will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina on February 21, 2022, followed by Raleigh, North Carolina on February 22, 2022. More information on these events coming soon.